One of the things that I love about the
strands are the variations in color from blue-grayto dusky violet to
indigo. I didn't want that to get lost, so I did a quick sort. I ended
up with 7 color sets. (Arguably, it could have been narrowed to three or
four, but where's the fun in that?) Since the focus of the piece is the
Iolite, that went in the middle. Then the real fun began. I took the
Ruby Apatite and pulled the pinkiest, purplest, bluest beads I could
find and used them up the sides. You may notice that I did play with the
color there, too.

One of my all-time favorite design hacks
is selectively using stones or sorting them by color to create a more
streamlined design. If your designer's eye isn't seeing
possibilities in stones like Black-Gold Amazonite, Fancy, Red Creek, or
Polychrome Jasper, take a strand and do a quick color sort. Even just
putting them into a "warm" and "cool" pile will help you see them
differently.

This necklace was a quick
project and super fun. When working with a time limit, it's always
helpful to have the beauty of the stone do the heavy lifting for me.

A few fun details about Iolite:

•
Thin slices were used as the first polarizing filter. As in, use it to
look at the sun so you can determine its exact position and navigate.
The Vikings literally used this stuff to navigate at sea.

• May also be referred to as Water Sapphire or Dichroite. But no, it's *not* a Sapphire variety.

•
Iolite is said to enhance the growth of hair and nails. I feel like
this is the kind of thing that requires ingestion, so if any of you care
to try it (at your own risk) on your own, please let us know. I'm
guessing most readers of this blog put the beauty of their nails on the
line every day.

• If you're into chakras, you probably already know that it's primarily associated with the Third Eye chakra.

• On the energy front, it's associated with promoting a calm, clear mind, and it's one of the stones said to enhance meditation.